Sometimes, to live is better
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: They say that sometimes, dead is better, but that's not always true. Sometimes, to live is better, but it depends on how one lives. In two different universes, two different times, the same situation exists where a place that brings things back brings nothing but misery, and now a lone figure of mercy and retribution comes to end the madness and restore life. Believe in hope.
1. Pet Sematary of the Past

Creation began on 04-02-19

Creation ended on 04-06-19

Pet Sematary

Sometimes, to live is better

A/N: Discovering the outcome of the reboot inspired this.

Brother Correction watched as the Creed family was, yet again, destroyed by the power of the ancient burial ground that children of the past referred to as the Pet Sematary (he could care less about the misspelling right now).

"It isn't just the cemetery that's caused trouble," he uttered as he saw the truck kill Ellie instead of her brother, Gage. "It's the dangerous roads that trucks use to accelerate at high speeds."

Getting up from his wooden throne, he divided himself into two copies, both with a chosen duty of various mistakes to undo.

"We both know what we must do," one of them told the other.

"Then let's go do it," the other responded.

-x-

_Pet Sematary Past_

Unlike the modern times of the universe one of the Brother Corrections transported to in order to begin correcting the mistakes made, and one of the mistakes of the country of Maine's town of Ludlow…was the Micmac Indian burial ground that was the real cemetery that could bring the dead back in corrupted states. As he walked to the middle of the burial ground during the ancient times before the Indians ever set foot upon such soil, Brother Correction laid eyes upon the wendigo that could see no fear in him.

"Why are you here?" It asked him.

"I'm here to right a series of wrongs," he answered it.

"What wrongs?"

"One of them…is the grounds you reign, centuries from now, centuries from then, up to what will referred to as the modern age, where people will cease to believe in mysticism and more in science and technology, and these grounds must be cleansed of your existence."

"You would dare to bring harm to me?!"

"I dare to remove you. You, who depend upon the flesh of those buried on your sacred grounds, to twist and turn them when you possess them, to spread madness and insanity across those that feel grief and despair after losing a loved one to the point of choosing to defy the natural order of life and death to try and reclaim them, only for you to destroy them. A piece of advice from a former mortal: The next time you want to screw someone over for the Hell of it, don't."

FLASH-BANG! Starting from beneath his feet, an intense storm of fire began to spread across what would one day become Ludlow, burning away all that stood there.

In less than eight minutes on all sides, there was no trace of any greenery, wildlife, nothing to indicate there was anything of life associated with this section of Maine.

"Rrrrrrraaaurgh!" The wendigo shrieked as it was incinerated off the face of existence. "You will never be rid of me! You can't kill me!"

With a vacant expression, Brother Correction uttered, "Whoever said anything about killing you, wendigo? There are fates far worse than those of death…and those fates are just as extreme as any that ends life. You will know firsthand."

Then, with a new step onto the scorched earth around him, a wave of greenish energy spread from his body across the ruins of ancient Ludlow, bathing them with invigorating life that began to regenerate. He had to destroy every last trace of greenery that had been laced with the presence of the wendigo before replacing it with new life that was untouched by darkness. Even if the future Indians came and used the lands for their burial grounds, no power would revive the deceased, no matter what…because without a dark influence to bring increased despair to those in agony over loss…sometimes dead was better…because those lost were kept alive in the memories of those that loved them.

In less than five minutes, the entire land was reclaimed by trees, flowers and wildlife. The first few mistakes had been corrected, but that was only the past mistakes. Now, Brother Correction needed to travel to a different, more familiar part of the past of this dimension to resolve two last mistakes that needed to be corrected.

"One step to the past, two to the future…and three more steps to the destination," he uttered, and took two steps forward on the ground he was on, shifting towards the urbanized realm of Ludlow, now standing on the road that trucks were known to accelerate on. "There's the house the Creed family could move into…and there's no trace of the darkness around the pet cemetery in the back. All that needs to be done…is highway control."

With a wave of his hands, all along the road, miles apart, stood street signs that would instruct all drivers to obey the speeding limits…and barbed wire fencing (this would help to ensure that drives obeyed the speeding limits and not accelerate, at the same time ensuring that children couldn't venture out onto the roads). He even made sure to install concrete foundations that ran six feet under so that no one could dig beneath the fencing.

"With these in place, let's see how the future of this place has changed," he expressed, taking another step into the future…just in time to see the Creeds enjoying themselves at a party at their house. "So far, so good, but I can't leave anything to chance just yet."

Looking up ahead of the house, he saw something that was quite the shocker to his face. Instead of the Pet Sematary being several feet away within the forest behind, there was a large wall that separated the house and grounds around it from a large university that read, _"Ludlow University and Storage Facility"_. Somehow, the cemetery had been undone and in place of it was a place for learning and hoarding.

Honk! A truck horn blared nearby, and Brother Correction saw a semitrailer truck driving at an impressive speed of twenty miles, clearly obeying the speed limit.

"Mew," he heard a cat and looked down in front of him, seeing a British Shorthair, which was very lively and content.

"Nice to meet you, Church," he greeted the cat, grateful that it was alive.

"Wee!" He heard a little boy cry out as he saw Gage being pushed around in a tire swing by his sister, Ellie.

"It looks like I did it for now," he praised himself.

He then looked across the street and noticed something he hadn't seen moments before, and this was mainly because he wasn't looking. A large sign on the fence that read, _"Ludlow Pet Cemetery"_, and leading to and away from it was a crosswalk complete with a pair of traffic lights. This was an impressive way to better control the speeding trucks and enable people to get to the pet cemetery without difficulty.

"Someone must've made a suggestion or a complaint about crossing the streets that got heard," he suspected as he saw someone walking out of the cemetery. _Looks like Victor Pascow is enjoying life._

The person Brother Correction saw was indeed Victor Pascow, who looked better alive rather than as a disembodied soul that haunted Louis Creed regarding the accursed burial ground that ruined so many lives because of the wendigo. Peering into his soul, he saw that Victor had visited the pet cemetery to see his deceased Golden Retriever, who had been dead for a year.

"Does it get any easier?" He asked Victor as he crossed the road on a green light.

"Not at first," he answered him, "but after a while, it does. Kelly was my best friend on four legs with a tail. Thanks."

"No problem, sir. Have a good day."

"Same to you, too."

As Victor walked away, Brother Correction smiled as he felt everything in this scenario would be alright now. He had to hope his other half could fare just as well as he did in the other dimension of this world that held a dark place with a corrupt power that brought nothing but suffering to those afflicted with despair.

_Knowing myself, he'll do just fine,_ he thought.

To be continued…

A/N: At first, I thought this would be a single story, but after much consideration, this will be two parts. This chapter relates to the original film, and the next will revolve around the new adaptation. Sometimes, to live can be better when it's the right way to live.


	2. Pet Sematary of the Future

Creation began on 04-06-19

Creation ended on 07-05-19

Pet Sematary

Sometimes, to live is better: Merciful

A/N: Here is the final chapter.

_Pet Sematary Future_

As Gage Creed was in the limited safety of the family car, the three people that were once his mother, father and big sister approached him, looking worse for wear, literally. The baby boy didn't know at all that they weren't the same people he used to live with as the man that wasn't his father any longer gestured for him to unlock the door.

"I wouldn't listen to him, lad," Gage heard a man inside the car say to him. "That's not your father, anymore. None of them are your family, anymore."

"Who you?" He asked the man that was in the backseat that he wasn't even sure wasn't there earlier. "Why you in car?"

"I'm a friend to everyone, little boy," the dark stranger said, coming up to sit in the front seat. "You could say that I'm a part of the family, several times removed."

HISS! He looked at the reanimated Church and sighed at how the reanimated tabby cat bothered him.

"Oh, there are many words I could say to you," he uttered, "however, there's a child present, and his innocence doesn't need to be tarnished by unnecessary violence."

When the reanimated corpses of the Creed family got close to the car, Brother Correction smiled.

"Louis Creed," he spoke to the dead husband and father, "if you try to cheat the masters of life and death, there is always a price to pay, and that price carries consequences, repercussions and unexpected outcomes. It was too late for you to undo your sin the moment you failed to take care of Church…but it's never too late for me to save any of you from the consequences."

He raised his right hand up and snapped his fingers. At his command, the three reanimated members of the Creed family and the family cat became contained in crystal proportional to their individual sizes.

"Gage, would you care to see something cool?" He asked the little boy.

Gage, confused, nodded his head that he did.

"I want you to picture sunlight and butterflies, puppies and fish, fairies and sparkles. Think of what makes you happy, whatever makes you smile."

Suddenly, the car was aglow with light, blinding the vision of Church and the reanimated Creeds. Then, from within the light, came the forms of butterflies and fish, conjured through Brother Correction's power and Gage's imagination, but the former needed the latter to be distracted for a while as he worked out the way to reverse all the wrong that happened after the family moved to their new home. Through Gage's imagination, he could keep the Creeds away from the boy for as long as necessary until he dealt with the wendigo, which he felt was nearby.

"Let your happy thoughts keep you laughing, Gage," he instructed the toddler. "Happy thoughts keep the scary things away."

He got out of the car, but left a stuffed dog for the boy.

"Hello, Gage," the stuffed dog spoke, floating around the child. "My name is Nickels. Please, scratch my head."

Shutting the door, Brother Correction made sure that the boy was now safe from the darkness outside the car. After taking his seventh step away from the car, he could feel presence of a greater evil around him, indicating that the wendigo was close.

"I can't address you as a master of death, but I can see you as a cunning manipulator of those that lose people whose hearts made them whole," he uttered out to the wendigo, "and as a manipulator, you care nothing for the lives you tear to shreds to satisfy your own, twisted desires to control and cause further harm, directly and indirectly. You cause your potential victims to disregard the fact that sometimes it's better to stay dead than it might be better to be brought back to life. Well, I'm here to tell you that your way of bringing things back ends here and now. But I will be merciful towards you before I do anything else. I will offer you…this one chance to return to your realm beyond the mortal coil, never to return. Otherwise, I shall grant you…a fallen one's demise. Either leave…or face the repercussions of your wickedness, wendigo. The time and place to decide your fate…is here and now."

Thud! He heard something big slam onto the roof of the car behind him, and turned to face the wretched, horned creature that stunk of decay and cannibalism, looking down at him with dark eyes of malice and a drive to manipulate his flesh.

"Brother Correction," it uttered towards him, "your mercy…is declined. I have no need for it as I do for more victims. There are always those willing to cross the line, willing to sacrifice morality for who they long for returned to them. Why bother with these lives? They're doomed, regardless of what you do for them."

"I do what I do…because I choose to. If I want to put my life on the line for the sake of protecting others from their dark fates, I will do that. I've dealt with your kind, many times over, and you're all the same. You think there's nobody to stand up to you, nobody that will find a way to stop you, but the truth is…you couldn't be any further from the truth that people like that do exist…and they find ways to defeat you every time. And it keeps you from sleeping, from disregarding the fear that lingers behind your skull. The one that conjures up the courage to face the monster that stands between them and their salvation disarms the only power the monster has…and walks away knowing that they'll endure the unknown. I'm one of them, wendigo, and I will show you what lies beyond here and for you if you refuse to leave."

"Not if I consume your flesh first!"

"Then I should warn you, I'm poison to the likes of you. One bite out of my flesh…and you will become a withered corpse that won't be able to move, no matter how powerful you are."

"We'll just have to see about that!"

Fortunately, Gage's attention was too focused on clever diversion caused by the stuffed dog and other small creatures the toddler had inside his imagination, so there was zero chance of him paying attention to the wendigo.

Brother Correction conjured a wall of ice before the wendigo could make a move on him.

BASH! The creature slammed head first into the wall of thin ice that felt like thick rock.

"Rrrrrraaaurgh!" The wendigo roared in frustration, and Brother Correction had a new wrinkle to resolve; so long as the creature was vocal, Gage could be distracted by their conflict.

"I need to silence the world from Gage," he expressed, snapping his fingers on his left hand.

Suddenly, Gage was wearing ear muffs and the windows were covered in pictures of flowers and other children the boy's age while the stuffed dog put on a puppet show for him with other stuffed animals.

"Ah-ha-ha!" Gage laughed, oblivious to what was happening around him.

"Do you truly think your cheap parlor tricks will amount to anything?!"

"Cheap parlor tricks, you say? I'm not an arrogant person, but if you think my skills are cheap, you will see how hard it is to overcome one that is empowered by the promises of hope, redemption, forgiveness, authority and other forms of belief that transcend existence."

The wendigo tried to attack him again, but Brother Correction made the wall of ice turn to wall, enabling it to splash through it and hit the ground.

"You really think a little shower of water is going to stop me?" It asked him as it got back up, looking like it was steaming.

"Whoever said that was water?" Brother Correction asked him.

"What?"

"I turned the ice into acid, a liquid substance capable of eating through flesh."

The wendigo looked down at its claws and saw the fur and flesh present beginning to dissolve from them.

"You fool!"

"Just another one of my 'cheap parlor tricks'. And this is also cheap: I put cactus seeds in that acid so that when you got doused, they were seep into your exposed innards and take root inside you, and these are the kind that don't need water to flourish, just decaying flesh and blood."

Suddenly, vines made of cacti sprouted from the wendigo's legs and spread across its body, binding it.

"Graaurgh!" It roared, but was immediately silenced by some of the vines. "Mmmmm!"

Brother Correction approached the beast, unafraid of it trying to assault him or tear him apart. He looked at its face and gave a soft smirk.

"Do you think my abilities are nothing more than cheap parlor tricks?" He asked, and raised his right hand up, bringing over the crystal prisons of the reanimated Creeds. "We need to go back to where you tainted the burial grounds with your evil and undo the darkness you sowed."

Levitating the wendigo off its feet, Brother Correction took them towards the back of the Creed house, outside of Gage's distracted range of vision; so long as the boy was occupied by other factors carefully placed to keep him unaware of the danger around him, he was protected inside the car. As he flew them over to the inhuman burial ground, he could feel the evil coursing around them. It was sickening, but nothing he hadn't faced before.

"Do you have any last words, wendigo?" He asked the creature as the cactus-like vines untangled themselves from its snout.

"You will never be rid of me," it told him. "Do you hear me, boy? Sooner or later, you will pay the ultimate price and experience suffering just like these lost souls. Every time someone tries to cheat Death, an inescapable price will always be expected to be paid!"

Brother Correction looked at the Creeds and Church, seeing their suffering because of how they were brought back through dark means, how their souls were tortured because of the evil the wendigo infected them with, and sympathetic to their inability to go back to being who they were so long as they were like this.

"Tell me," he said to the wendigo, "can your heart experience the joys of life? Does your body burn with the passion that those in love feel? Can you ever understand why people feel the way they feel when alive and how they affect their loved ones after death?"

"You know I feel nothing the way they do."

"In the next three seconds…you will."

Three seconds later, the wendigo felt something happening within its body. There was a pulsating sensation occurring in its chest, a feeling of heat beneath its decayed flesh and a sense of pain that affected where its brain was.

"Do you feel them, wendigo?" Brother Correction asked it, watching as the beast writhe in agony. "Do you feel the lives of the people you used for your own purposes? Do you feel their pain, their sadness and their dreams?! Do you, wendigo?! Do you?!"

FLASH! Images of people that tried to use the burial grounds to bring back their loved ones suffer, either through the insanity of the burial grounds or because their loved ones turned violent towards them and speaking of things that they couldn't understand accurately.

"_No!" _It heard Louis' voice cry out in its mind, forcing it to grab its own head in agony. _"No!"_

"Stop it!" It yelled at Brother Correction, who stood where he was. "Their voices, I can't stand them! Get them out of my head! Get them out!"

"It hurts thinking about the people you led to their end, doesn't it?" He asked. "Listen to them. Your soul is stained by your eternity of decadence combined with the lives of the innocent. And now their pain…is now your pain. All of their pain…is now all of your pain."

"Grrrraah! Aaaurgh!"

The wendigo howled in pain felt its inside on fire as realization came hard: Brother Correction had somehow forced it to live like any other creature that it brought back to life through the burial grounds, but it wasn't stiff or like an undead. It was like how all warm-blooded creatures did, only it hurt worse than how it was with them when they died.

"Stop it! Please! Undo what you did to me! I can't stand this! Dead is better! Dead is better!"

But Brother Correction just watched as the wendigo suffered. It didn't take too long for its suffering to end. Even after two minutes of listening to its agonizing cries for its pain.

Now, lying dead on the ground, the wendigo possessed the creepiest smile on its face; in the end of suffering, it was relieved at how its physical suffering had ceased. There was no way of knowing for certain about its emotional or spiritual suffering, but its deceased state simply invoked the belief that had been an absolute for most.

"And now, you get to believe in that saying yourself," he told the wendigo. "Sometimes, dead really is better. Better for those who suffer…and for those who have yet to suffer."

With the wendigo dealt with, all he had to do now…was undo the madness that plagued the Creeds that were resurrected through the cemetery. Looking at them as they were still in their crystal prisons, he sighed at how much their suffering had yet to end…but promised them that it would end shortly.

"Let go of the stains," he said. "Let go of the pain. Let go of your suffering…and embrace my heart. Embrace my warmth. Shed your decay…and feel the sunlight once more as those you were…and must be again."

Their crystals glowed bright pink…and he heard muffled screams that were the echoes of their damned selves being purged from them.

-x-

"Aaah!" Jud Crandall gasped as he awoke to the new day, finding himself on the floor where he had fallen after Ellie sliced through his foot. "What? What is…wasn't I dead?"

He got up and found his foot was fine, not even a sprain. He ran outside and saw no sign of the house across the street where the Creeds had moved in.

"They're not here yet," he heard someone say behind him, and turned to see a dark man standing a few feet away from him. "They'll be around within another half-hour."

"What? How am I alive? What's going on here?"

"The pet cemetery isn't the only force capable of bringing things back," he told him. "I brought you back to life. This isn't your punishment for your former role in showing Louis that horrible place. This…is forgiveness. Everything is changed now. The cemetery has been relocated…and the sour lands beyond it are cleansed."

"Who…who are you?"

"You know who I am."

Jud once heard a story about a man that nobody else could explain much about. It seemed like something beyond what was considered normal, about how he undo certain things that nobody else could, about how he was tasked by a higher power to wander existence for eternity, undoing the most horrible of sins committed, and how he was timeless and everlasting. There was no other person like this man.

"What is there in place of the burial grounds now?" Jud asked him.

"A large playground," he answered. "Replace the darkness of certain places with something more positive, alter the historic background of places and leave the bad things to be forgotten."

Jud then looked back at the road…and noticed large fences made of metal and concrete that he was certain weren't there earlier.

"Speeding trucks and other vehicles now have to obey the speeding limits I put in place on the roads," Brother Correction told him. "Because people live out here where there's less road rules, there will always be a risk to personal safety. I've put extensive measures to ensure that nobody, human or animal, can suffer because of these factors we have no control over in our day-to-day lives. When you see the Creeds again, don't be shocked if you find more things a little different about them. That place may no longer exist…but some memories of its darkness shouldn't be forgotten by those that have been around longer than those that have just moved in."

"Wait, if you've changed things, then…what happened to Norma? Please, I need to know."

"Because the cemetery no longer exist, you never attempted to bring her back. People attempting to bring back their dead pets and loved ones never do. No matter how much heartache one suffers when they lose someone, time does enable one to recover from some of the loss. When the time comes for one to depart this world, the people left behind will grieve and feel disillusioned with life…but time heals most wounds that can't be seen. And what you once told Louis is one of the world's most absolute truths regarding the belief of bringing things back."

"Sometimes, dead is better."

"Metaphorically…and literally."

-x-

Returning to his domain, Brother Correction sat on his wooden throne and observed the changes he made to the world now that the wendigo and the corrupted cemetery were removed from existence, along with other minor changes he made. He saw as the Creeds arrived to their new home, Ellie had Church on a leash like a dog and Gage was being held by their mother because he had a cast on his right leg. Looking a little further backwards into Rachel's past, he saw how the woman, as a girl, had a more positive relationship with her elder sister, Zelda, who, instead of suffering from Spinal Meningitis, simply had a case of leukemia that had been treated early on; it was probably one of Brother Correction's greater achievements by changing one bad disease for another that was not as horrible or as degenerative and caused a strain of the ties of family that didn't know what else to do…and because he did feel sympathy for Zelda, having no control over her body's circumstances.

"Sometimes, dead is better," he told himself, "but sometimes, to live is better, too. Those that can find the strength to live…can find the will to overcome the adversity of the world."

Then, he saw a situation where Louis was helping to save the life of one Victor Pascow, who, instead of suffering from a head injury caused by a car accident, was just suffering a ruptured spleen caused by the same accident, easily treatable.

"Thank you," he heard Victor say to Louis after his successful surgery.

"Don't mention it," Louis expressed. "We were lucky that your spleen wasn't as bad as we initially thought it was. You'll still need bed rest for a few weeks, but your recovery is looking good. Do be mindful of the cars, though."

"Yes, sir."

Brother Correction chuckled at their conversation and saw Church unable to leave the house and venture outside because Ellie wouldn't let him out her room. The girl didn't trust the fence or the stop signs to keep the truck drivers in check every time people wanted to cross the street or something, and she was protecting her pet.

"Well, I can't argue with her protective nature," he sighed.

With his task in both worlds now complete, all he could do was wait for the next mistake to make itself known. Maybe an alien menace attacking a small town, a demon born of one's desire for revenge, a case of greed gone wrong, perverse thoughts taking on a life of their own, something that he needed to deal with in order to preserve innocent lives or punish people that deserved retribution. But whether or not he would have to deal with a creature like the wendigo again in the future was unknown at this point. All he knew was that a creature of decay was among the worst of creatures that embraced evil, whether or not it was because of their nature or the way they were nurtured.

"No more pet cemeteries for at least three years," he told himself.

Sometimes, dead is better…but sometimes, to live is merciful

A/N: Well, I've finally finished it. I hope you enjoyed my reworking of the films to be positive. Let me know what your thoughts were of it.


End file.
